


what if Cat didn't exist?  A fanfic (lost motivation to write)

by Magma_terra



Category: A Practical Guide to Evil - erraticerrata
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-11
Updated: 2020-05-30
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:49:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23109529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Magma_terra/pseuds/Magma_terra
Summary: Hello and welcome to this fanfiction. Essentially the entire idea of this fanfiction is to answer a question I like to ask of many series I enjoy, which is the question of “What if the main character didn't exist?”. And so, this is mostly the result. Credit to the PGTE discord server, as many ideas in this fanfiction, such as the first chapters sort of POV character’s name, come from that server. I HIGHLY recommend having read up to the current volume of the serial before reading, though I don't really have a way to stop you if you haven't. (warning, this fanfic is both not amazing and currently on permanent hiatus. if you want to pick up the concept, please contact me, magma (the booker) on the PGTE discord server and ask to do so. if you do this, please actually write something
Kudos: 10





	1. Early Ripples

5 years after the Conquest a young woman raises her head from the bar she had been getting drunk in. She felt… something. Not like anything else she had felt before, and she had felt quite a bit over the centuries. Something very odd. The sort of odd that only comes from something with unseen affects.

She wasn't the only one who felt something, but she was the only one who knew just how odd it would be. Across Calernia anyone with a sense for the metaphysical felt a slight ripple. Not many considered it important, though a couple powerful people would take note, like the young woman from the bar. 

Warlock Wekesa would begin research into the movement of the Hells, citing this incident as evidence that Hells could crash into each other, though he would never get another chance to observe the event. Sve Noc would pause mid message to their most dedicated cabal. A young not yet Augur would begin crying for reasons she could not understand. The Forever King stops brooding over his lost son for a moment and is about to give an order when a servant rushes into the throne room about Ranger having stolen something important yet again. 

But that is all in the past. It would take at least 15 years for the full effects of this ripple in something to truly be felt. 15 years worth of context. 15 years worth of semi important events. 15 years skipped to get to the important parts. 

James Smith the blacksmith was a humble man. Not a simple man, but a humble one. His family had been blacksmiths for 4 generations, starting with his great grandfather, the Blessed Blacksmith, who had crafted the sword that would later kill Dread Emperor Indolent, the Slothful. As far as he knew, Indolent’s plan had been something involving making callow as lazy as possible so praes could take over due to lowered training standards and lesser weapon quality. Not the best plan of Praes, and not even the weirdest, but it had certainly been interesting James would give Indolent that. 

Laure was, well, Laure. After Mazus moved in James would have had to join the blacksmiths guild, if such an organization existed, but it didn’t. This was another thing his great grandfather had taken care of, as the old blacksmiths guild had been heavily corrupted by Indolent’s Chancellor and the Blessed Blacksmith had never formed it anew, and it hadn’t formed yet. Infact, before Mazus had moved in James had been thinking about getting the whole process started, but well that whole plan went to keter. 

You may be wondering why James would be reminiscing about all this. Well the Black Knight had come into the city about a week back and just stabbed the bastard in the chest mid dinner party. Apparently some of Mazus’s “guards”, who were mostly no better than a group of well paid thugs, had raped young woman right as the Black Knight was walking by, which had apparently tipped him over the edge of a common hanging or suicide. One of the old eldermen had been appointed as temporary governor of the city, and it seemed like a good time for James to start up the process of forming a blacksmiths guild, maybe even with him at the head. 

It had been 15 years but the ripples were finally affecting things, of this the Bard was sure.


	2. A Wave At Court

Risha was a janitor. She mopped the floor, scrubbed the walls, cleaned the ceiling, killed the rats, that sort of thing. She even had a special janitors closet to herself, with magical anti termite powder to spread on the furniture. Of course, this was all made more difficult by where she worked, The Tower. Working in the Tower made her job all the harder, as in addition to dealing with rats she also had to deal with the semi consistent devil population that resided within the Tower, as who knows how many Praesi had summoned the dang things over the years. Risha may well have been within the top 10% of highest paid janitors on Calernia. 

Even with that, the past month had made Risha think of claiming that retirement pension Dread Empress Malicia had reinstated after it had been gone for about a century. This wasn't the first time this month she had considered this either. Over the past month, various High Lords and even Her Dreadful Majesty Herself had sponsored more and more elaborate and wild celebrations, ceremonies, and general parties, all leading up to a grand final party last night to celebrate the founding of the Dread Empire. That wild grand party had taken up 3 whole floors of the tower, and had been so messy nearly half the Towers cleaning staff had been called in to deal with the cleanup. 

Another reason she had been wanting to retire was that she had been cleaning the Tower for near 40 years now, and she just couldn't quite clean up the outbursts of the more murder happy Praesi Nobles. Just today it had happened twice! The news of what the Black Knight had done in Laure and the Dread Empress had had enough of a reaction to the news that two particularly paranoid nobles had gone a bit mad when they heard the Knight had done such a thing. They declared that if Praes wanted to avoid civil war the Black Knight must die for this or he would kill them all. Risha was sure this was not the last time this would happen, and wanted to get out before she died in some sort of power play. 

_Cut to a couple hours ago._

All was mostly well in Helike. Kairos, the most recent of the cities Tyrants, had just gotten word from one of his Callowan informants. The Black Knight seemed to be on the road to rebellion, even if he didn't know it yet. Kairos started laughing and kept schemeing for the upcoming meeting of the cities, but he would have to keep an eye on this. 

_Salia, half an hour later_

The Augur sat in her garden, watching the birds, the bugs, the spiders, and so on. Each important, each a metaphor for something, be it for the implications of a random sale of bread from one Lyconese merchant to an Almans prince with an unhealthy obsession with a certain bird or the deep meaning behind a woman dying of alcohol poisoning and waking up in a different body just a couple minutes later. Now however, Augur had seen things spiraling out from those ripples 15 years ago, and now things were going. She was hesitant to say how they were going, but things were happening. Things Cordelia should know about. 

_Warlock Wekesa, the next day_

Warlock was in hell #928 under the Praesi Hell Categorization System, or the PHC. He was cataloging a phenomenon unique to this hell in his search for more evidence of how the hells moved when he got the scry from his husband about what his friend had done. He had one piece of evidence, one main point of fact for his growing theory of Hell Movement: those ripples across the metaphysical 15 years ago. According to his Theory, Hells moved constantly throughout their part of the world, and they could crash into each other. He had more evidence for it than this one fact, but it all hinged on that once in an elvish lifetime event he had termed a Hellish Conglomeration. He was still searching for the hell that had formed from that conglomeration, but he would find it, whatever it took. His son had joined him in this project in his early days of education, but had since taken a, he and his husband thought at least, unhealthy amount of interest in the Heavens. Masego refused to share any of his project with him for now, but it seemed to have started to consume his life. 


	3. A Lone Incident

Mavial was a skilled tailor of the Royal Family of Helike. Recently he had been serving the rather odd tastes of the newest Tyrant, Kairos Theodosian. His Majesty had taken an unusual shine to togas, insisting "they were the perfect combination of flowing cape and dark cloak". While he ad been measuring the Tyrant, he had rambled about some Hero in Callow, the Lonely Spearman? He hadn't been fully paying attention to the rant, so he might be wrong on the exact Name, but apparently they had blown up Summerholm, killing a Praesi general. The Calamities had apparent pursued him all the way into the Waning Woods, where Ranger had probably taken care of the man. 

While Mavial could care less about politics like that, he did care intensely for Fashion news, which had blown up in recent weeks. The Augur of Procer had made a rare appearance at a feast and claimed that "the Birds of Night Foresaw Beauty", which had then caused an explosion of bird related motifs in Proceran fashion. Faux wings, talon shaped boots, and plumes of hair had all become typical court fashion, which is to say nothing of the fantassins, who had taken this between their teeth and ran with it. Whole companies now wore feather shaped scabbards, sharp clawed gauntlets, and beak shaped helmets. As he was pondering how to implement birds of prey into a toga, one of his apprentices burst into his workshop.   
  


The Dead King had Received a Red Letter.

* * *

The Warlock Wekesa did not have many servants, nor the many estates typical of many Named in Praes, though he did keep one. A couple miles from the Hall of Skulls, there is a small mining town that grows mushrooms in the tunnels once the mineral veins are tapped out. They occasionally hired Ogres to help clear cave ins and do some heavy lifting, but overall they were very unremarkable. This all made it quite the surprise when the newest Warlock of Praes established a small estate on the off skirts of town. It went largely unused, mostly only used when the Warlock wanted to conduct farming or mineral based experiments. It had seen a great deal more use in the last week, as the Apprentice had arrived on the estate without either of his fathers. The people of the town always tended to avoid the estate, but the children did not. Lead by an ogre child who had run away from their mother, a gang of children listened at a window. A sort of dark light poured out, followed by a crackle. The children fled, but not before they heard something that sounded like singing.   
  
The Singing Was not Beautiful, nor was it glorious. The human children would keep quite, or at least as quite as children can be, but the ogre child would not. He would tell an elder, the oldest ogre in the Hall of Skulls what he had saw and heard, and after the elder has scolded the child and sent him back to his mother, she would begin to think, begin to remember something. Something older than the Hall of Skulls. 


End file.
